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Governor Branstad appointed Bob Sinclair and Gene Ver Steeg, both with deep roots in corporate ag, to the Iowa Environmental Protection Commission (EPC). There is still one open spot on the EPC that has not been filled.

The EPC is the citizen oversight board of the Iowa Department of National Resources (DNR) and is charged with overseeing DNR decisions, rulemaking and factory farm applications, permits and violations.

Gene Ver Steeg raises about 20,000 corporate hogs per year on 4 factory farms in Northwest Iowa, is the former president of the Iowa Pork Producers Association (IPPA) and former EPC member from 2008-2011. He is quoted by the Wall Street Journal saying that implementing the Clean Water Act in Iowa is a waste of money.

Bob Sinclair is a former employee of Cargill and currently owns a tractor dealership outside of Sigourney, Iowa.

The EPC now consists of 8 members with the following ties to the factory farm industry:

Bob Sinclair – Former president of the Iowa Pork Producers Association and factory farmer

We need elected and appointed officials that work for the people, not corporations. As we gear up for the summer of clean water we will continue to hold Govorner Branstad and the Iowa EPC accountable to work for The People, not their personal business interests.

At the annual CCI convention there will be an in depth workshop on our work with the Environmental Protection Agency, the DNR and the Clean Water Act. Join us on Saturday, July 13th to learn more about how we hold polluters, elected and appointed officials accountable.

Print these talking points off and take them with you:

Say your name, where you are from, and that you are a proud member of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement.

Governor Branstad, Regent President Craig Lang, and Regent Pro-Tem Bruce Rastetter have twisted the role of Iowa’s public universities to serve private interests rather than the public good.

Corporate corruption inside our public institutions by our public officials is not acceptable.

Pick one scandal that you care about the most and particularly makes you angry. Maybe it’s the closure of UNI’s Price Lab, or the ISU/AgriSol landgrab in Tanzania, or the infringement of academic freedom at the Tom Harkin Institute of Public Policy, or the hiring of private corporate lobbyists to serve as university representatives, or regents working with industry lobby groups to silence outspoken professors. Pick one and briefly explain why you care and why it’s wrong.

The list of polluted waters in the state of Iowa has grown from 606 in 2010 to 628 in 2012, according to new data released by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and analyzed by Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (Iowa CCI) members.

“The total number of impaired waters in Iowa’s 2012 Integrated Report is 628, with 482 Section 303(d) waters [Category 5: impaired and TMDL needed] and 146 waters in Category 4 [impaired but TMDL not required],” reads a new Clean Water Act draft report prepared by John Olson, a DNR Senior Environmental Specialist.

The DNR will present the findings to the Environmental Protection Commission (EPC) at their monthly meeting on January 15 in the Henry A. Wallace Building west of the state capitol. That same day, the EPC will also consider a “hands-off” rule proposed by the Iowa Association of Business and Industry to weaken enforcement options and “ensure compliance within the least restrictive means possible”.

The new numbers mark the largest number of polluted waterways in Iowa since the state began keeping records sixteen years ago. In 2008, there were 542 polluted rivers, lakes, and streams, according to the DNR.

“I want to live in a state with clean water, but the DNR is now scheduled to weaken factory farm enforcement on behalf of a corporate interest group, on the same day they hear new data that our water quality continues to get worse,”

said Lori Nelson of Bayard, the Iowa CCI Board president, who is surrounded by 5,000 corporate hogs within a half mile of her home.

Iowa CCI members say that the recent water quality findings also puts renewed pressure on Governor Terry Branstad to end his opposition to strong and effective public oversight just days before his 2013 “Condition of the State” address next Tuesday.

“Governor Branstad has spent the last two years trying to de-regulate and defund environmental protections while promoting a failed voluntary compliance approach that benefits the corporate ag industry at the expense of everyday Iowans and the environment,” Nelson continued.

“In the short-term, we need a fully-funded DNR and strong new Clean Water Act rules that ensure operating permits for all of Iowa’s 8,000 factory farms, with a three strikes and you’re out policy for habitual violators. In the long-term, we need local control, stronger permitting standards, and increased separation distances.”

There have been more than 800 documented manure spills since 1995. In 2010, former DNR Director Rich Leopold told a crowd of Scott County CCI members that the real number could be 10 times that high.

Join the fight

Join us on January 15th for our Kickoff at the Capitol to fight for clean water and public policy that protects Iowa!

The Secretary of State also gives Notice that a public hearing will be held on Thursday, January 3, 2013, from 2 p.m. – 4 p.m. in order to receive oral or written comments on rule 721–28.5(47,48A) published herein. The hearing will originate from the Iowa Communications Network (ICN) and will be accessible over the ICN at the following locations.

CEDAR FALLS Iowa — Last weekend Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement protested at the homes of Gov. Terry Branstad’s staff to remove agribusiness leader Bruce Rastetter from the Iowa Board of Regents.

On Tuesday night, the group met in Cedar Falls to talk strategy to oust Rastetter from the board which governs the state’s public universities.

CCI filed an ethics complaint with the Iowa Ethics and Campaign board in June over Rastetter’s involvement with Iowa State University and AgriSol Energy, a business led by Rastetter working to buy and develop farm land in Tanzania.

Representatives for Rastetter and Branstad have denied a conflict of interest between Rastetter’s work on the board and AgriSol. However, Rastetter recused himself from discussing issues of AgriSol and Iowa State last September.

More than 40 people turned out at the Cedar Falls Recreation Center for the “Fire Rastetter” session. Some were longtime CCI members, others were involved in Occupy Cedar Falls or groups that fought against the closure of the Malcolm Price Laboratory School.

Critics of AgriSol, including CCI, Food and Water Watch and the Oakland Institute, say the Tanzania project will uproot 160,000 refugees from Burundi, some of whom have been farming in Tanzania for decades. AgriSol investors have said the project has components that will help small local farmers improve their methods.

Iowa State was brought on board with the project to provide services and training to farmers in the area. The university cut ties to AgriSol in February. Rastetter made a $1.75 million donation to the entrepreneurship program of Iowa State’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Speakers at the Tuesday event said the Rastetter AgriSol controversy is just one example of how corporations are taking more control of universities in Iowa and across the nation.

“Bruce Rastetter is a real egregious example of what you see as far as corporate influence at our public universities,” said Tim Schwab of Food and Water Watch. His watchdog group also has signed on to CCI’s ethics complaint.

CCI and Food and Water Watch gave out petitions to those in attendance to encourage people to sign on to remove Rastetter from the Regents.

The group started planning to be present at the Aug. 3 Board of Regents meeting in Cedar Falls as well as the Aug. 23 meeting of the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board, where that board will decide whether to further investigate the Rastetter ethics complaint.

“We’re really facing issues of the encroachment of corporate power into our institutions. We are seeing more and more of that in higher education,” said Joe Gorton, a criminology professor at the University of Northern Iowa.

More anti-Rastetter sessions are planned Wednesday in Iowa City and Thursday in Ames.

Take action

Join hundreds of other Iowans calling on Gov. Branstad to fire Bruce Rastetter – the man unable to separate his role as an Iowa public Regent from his personal financial interest. Click here to read more and add your name.

Dig on this issue with other Iowa CCI members and guests from Food and Water Watch at meetings in Cedar Falls, Iowa City and Ames the week of July 16. Find details on our calendar page.

Rastetter and Tanzania

We’re all entitled to our own opinions, but not to our own facts. The Daily Iowan‘s July 12 editorial “AgriSol profits don’t make the company at fault” makes an ideological argument about the value of so-called “free markets” and “feeding the world” without any critical analysis of the actual facts on the ground, much less the perspectives of the poor refugees directly affected.

These are the facts. Bruce Rastetter is a hog and ethanol baron and vulture capitalist who gave Gov. Terry Branstad’s re-election campaign $160,000. Branstad returned the favor by appointing Rastetter to the state Board of Regents. Rastetter spent months abusing his power as a regent to leverage Iowa State University to provide cover for a corporate land grab in Tanzania that could displace as many as 160,000 refugees.

Rastetter’s deal with Tanzania could allow his corporation to lease 800,000 acres of land for 25 cents an acre. The subsistence farmers on the land — who currently grow a variety of crops and account for 40 percent of the region’s food on just 4 percent of the land — will be forcibly displaced and moved to urban slums, where they will no longer be able to feed themselves or their families.

With the land cleared, Rastetter will bring in Monsanto, Smithfield, and all the major corporate ag titans and build factory “farms without farmers.” Rather than employ local people, they will bring in migrant workers from South Africa — a classic colonial divide and conquer tactic.

The products produced will not feed local Tanzanians. They will be sold on international grain and ethanol markets. The livestock will go to Southeast Asia. Rastetter and his investors stand to make up to $300 million a year.

Local people don’t benefit when corporations extract all the natural wealth of a region and take it out of the country with them.

Misty Rebik
Iowa City resident

Rastetter has conflict of interest

Food & Water Watch respectfully, yet completely, disagrees with The Daily Iowan Editorial Board’s assessment of Bruce Rastetter (“AgriSol profits don’t make the company at fault,” July 12). While suggesting the preposterous — that Rastetter’s operation in Tanzania is actually a humanitarian cause that will cure “mental retardation” through providing cheap eggs to poor people in Africa — the Editorial Board completely ignores a long paper trail showing the ways in which Rastetter has deeply compromised both himself and Iowa State University through his Tanzanian land grab.

Rastetter has acknowledged his conflict of interest — serving on the Board of Regents while also working with the school on his for-profit project AgriSol — but only after media attention embarrassed him.

The AgriSol project has created additional conflicts for administrators and professors in the College of Agriculture, who eagerly decided to put the personal interests of Rastetter above those of the students, farmers, and consumers in Iowa.

The public deserves a Board of Regents and a university that are forthright, upfront, and honest; that serve the public at all times, and Rastetter’s presence in Ames would appear to make this impossible.

Matt Ohloff
Iowa organizer for Food & Water Watch

Take Action

Join hundreds of other Iowans calling on Gov. Branstad to fire Bruce Rastetter – the man unable to separate his role as an Iowa public Regent from his personal financial interest. Click here to read more and add your name.

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